The Digital Front

[Mark_Gedak]

“High Psionics Compilation: Volume I” by Dreamscarred Press is a 103 page compilation of psionic support material for the d20 fantasy system. This compilation is composed of eight previously released products all collected for $10.95 (individually they would be over $17). The product is divided into nine chapters by the type of content and the material from the original releases was reorganized and laid out new for this release (instead of just merging files); this reorganization has created one problem with the product though.

The product opens with a chapter dedicated to five alternate enhancements to the psicrystal concept. With an awakened psicrystal, the psicrystal gains enough sentience to exhibit three psionic powers based upon its personality. A cognizance psicrystal, allows the manifester to treat their psicrystal as a cognizance crystal. Other options in this chapter include implanting the psicrystal into your body so that you are never apart, have an elemental creature as a psicrystal (called a psicrysmal in Chapter 9), or transform you psicrystal into a weapon. Though I like the idea of a psicrystal weapon it is hampered by the fact that it doesn’t gain the ability to overcome any damage reduction and also because the feat necessary to take this option is not in the book.

The second chapter is focused on alternatives to the soul knife. Last weekend, a friend of mine decided to start a 2nd level campaign. We needed someone for an spellcaster or psionic role. To manage this role without putting my character in dire peril, I opted for a human soul bastion 1/psion 1 with psionic body. It is very comfortable to take on the psionic or spellcaster role when you start with 23 hp and a base armour class of 14. The soul bastion is a d12 hp class that manifests psionic armour instead of a psionic weapon. He is a tank, that eventual is able to reflect attacks back upon his attackers. There are three other soul variants that including variants that focus on a heavy weapon approach, a dual weapon approach and finally a variant for throwing mind blade more often but at the loss of the shaping of the blade.

The next chapter is focused on eleven psionic diseases. The section utilizes its own format that provides much more material than the standard disease write-up. In this section each disease includes a challenge rating and adventure hook as well as detailed information on the transition, symptoms and cure. This section also provides information on how autohypnosis can be used to stave off a psionic disease.

Spanning almost 30 pages, the fourth chapter devoted to feats is one of the largest sections of this product. This section includes general feats, psionic feats, kensai feats, mantra feats and sequestral feats. A kensai feat is a class of feats that require a mind blade class feature (strangely Dreamscarred also has a product with “Mind Blade” feats that require this class feature) though I believe they serve the same purpose. Mantra feats are feats that only provide short lived bonuses when you concentrate on them and become psionically focused; you can only have on active mantra at a time. Lastly, are sequestral feats which grant you benefits while you have a specific type of power locked away from use (they remind me of reserve feats from one of those other companies). There are many interesting feats in hear, although some like Accelerated Mental Contact require that you be familiar with Untapped Potential (another large psionic book by Dreamscarred Press) to use them. I particularly like the Bodily Reservoir feat (which grants 1 PP per psionic feat you possess), Ectoplasmic Manipulator (that lets you make changes to an existing astral contruct), Psychic Cannibal (that allows you to drain victims of PP), and Unbalancing Strike (that allows you to trip an opponent by expending your psionic focus and successfully hitting the target; though as a DM I have concerns with this one). There are four feats that were in Psicrystals Expanded that didn’t seem to make it into this compilation such as Fleshcraft, Psicrystal Strike Focus, Psicrystal Weapon and Psicrystal Weapon Containment. Also not all of the feats in this section are on the feat tables.

Chapter 5 is designed to help you provide more striking visualizations to the manifestation of psionic powers. It provides you will a ton of alternate displays for the five psionic components (auditory, material, and the like), displays for combinations of components, displays based on powers subgroups, displays based on powers descriptors, or even on one of six themes that could be used to describe your character. In all there are easily more than 100 descriptive ideas here for describing the manifestation of psionic powers; compared to the five ideas that were squeezed into the primary psionic rules.

Psionic Organizations and Centers of Learning are the focus of the sixth chapter. Each of the learning centres or organization provides you with a description of the location, a description of the teachers and students, what a typical day is like and how characters and GMs can use this location. Some of the learning institutions also have class substitution levels, such as the obscured hand organization. This organization has wilder substitution levels at 1,2 and 5 which provide the wilder with a telekinetic enhancement to her powers. This section is nice because it provides the GM to make psionics more prominent in the setting by having collections of psionics character operating together for a common purpose within specific areas. Many of the learning centres could serve as a focal point to a psionic campaign.

The last twenty or so pages of the product are devoted to prestige classes, psionic items, and psionic creatures. There are five prestige classes presented: the chronorebel, neirmor, psychic disrupter, temporal authority, and undersense. Three of the prestige classes are directly linked to the psychic learning centers and none feature a full manifesting progression. The two that I like best are the neirmor, which taps into another consciousness called the Vast for added knowledge and skills and the psychic disrupter, who has the ability to negate and hinder others psionic powers. The items chapter includes one poison, one weapon property, one armour property, information on crystal hilts (for mind blades),three crystallics (sort of crystalline grafts), a new psicrown and about a dozen new universal items. Most of the universal items are used to weaken or inhibit psionic wielders in some way. There are four psionic monsters; two that harm the psions ability to manifest powers and two that are variants of the psicrystal.

The “High Psionic Compilation: Volume 1” is an incredibly crunchy book that provides a lot of options for psionic player characters and GMs that allow psionics in their games. There is a bit of trouble in the feat section where a couple of things got missed and something could have used a sidebar (see mental contact) but overall it is a very solid book that has already started to affect my campaign.

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